Ashen Winter (Ashfall)

bigger than Dad.
    Ben wasn’t exactly throwing a temper tantrum. It was too violent and uncontrolled for that. When he fell, he didn’t throw out his arms or protect his head. He never looked to see if we were watching—I doubted he was even aware of us by that point. He seemed utterly out of control.
    Suddenly Alyssa was back. She threw herself on top of Ben. She was like a cowboy on a bull at a rodeo—it’d be a miracle if she survived eight seconds. “Let go of him!” she screamed. “Don’t touch him! It’ll make it worse.”
    That seemed odd—she was lying on top of him. That didn’t count as touching? But I figured she knew her brother better than any of us, so I pulled Dad off Ben.
    Alyssa clung to Ben. Her voice dropped to a measured whisper. “It’s okay, Ben. We’ll keep trying your plan. You need to calm down.”
    Ben kept thrashing, almost throwing off Alyssa. I was afraid she’d get hurt. When my little sister had thrown temper tantrums, the moment she got what she wanted, the tantrum was over. This was different. Alyssa brushed her glove along Ben’s side, whispering at him in an impossibly calm voice.
    Gradually Ben quieted. It took fifteen or twenty minutes more, but eventually Alyssa got off him, he stood up and brushed the snow off his clothing, and we went on as if absolutely nothing had happened.
    I turned to my father. “One more night. Then I’m leaving, with or without your help.”
    Dad’s only reply was a scowl.
    • • •
    We moved our ambush spot that night. I was so sick of chanting “This Little Piggy” that I thought I might puke. I tried “Hickory Dickory Dock” for a while, then switched to counting one Mississippi, two Mississippi . . . five hundred Mississippi . . . one thousand Mississipi. I figured it was taking me a second just to say the numbers at that point, so I dropped the Mississippis, too.
    Sometime after 4 A.M. —I’d just reached 21,300 in my count—everything changed. A group of shadows slipped out from between the tents behind Alyssa. Then a hand reached around her face, clamping over her mouth.

Chapter 64
    I burst from under the tent in an explosive lunge, reaching the closest of the attackers in seconds. Four black-clad shapes had surrounded Alyssa. One of them was turning my way. I swept his legs from under him with a round kick and hit him in the side of the head with a right backfist as he fell. Even as my backfist connected, I was reaching toward the next one with a left uppercut to the stomach and launching a sidekick at a third attacker.
    Suddenly it was all over. Dad and his four prefects swarmed over the attackers. There were six of us and four of them, and we’d taken them by surprise from behind. They all went down. Someone produced a hank of rope and started tying their hands behind their backs.
    “You okay?” I asked Alyssa.
    “Y-y-yeah.” She was shaking.
    I hugged her. “You did good,” I whispered.
    “You, too.” Her cheeks were wet as she cried soundlessly.
    The prefects had hauled all the bandits to their feet. Everyone seemed to be okay, other than some bruises.
    “What will you do with them?” Alyssa asked Dad.
    “Find out who they are. How they got into the camp. Figure out how to stop them—if we can.” We’d started walking back toward the center of camp, the tied bandits in tow.
    “You think it’d be okay if I went to lie down?” Alyssa asked.
    “Yeah, I think that’d be fine,” Dad replied.
    I caught her hand and squeezed it. “You did good. You were brave.”
    “I don’t feel brave. But thanks.”
    Dad directed that each of the bandits be held separately. I followed him as he pushed one of the guys into a tent big enough to stand up in. After a moment we were joined by one of the prefects, Amy Jones, who took the shake light from Dad.
    Dad stood behind the bandit, holding his bound arms. “Search him,” Dad ordered. It was strange to hear him giving orders—as if he’d been replaced by a different man who looked like my father. Amy was holding the flashlight, so it fell to me to do the search. I started at his neck, working my way down. When I patted the guy’s right ankle, I felt a long, slender shape under his pant leg.
    He kicked without warning, aiming for my face. I got my hand between his foot and my head, but the force of the kick still knocked me backward. Dad hauled up on his arms so hard I heard his shoulders crack. The guy moaned, and Dad said, “Kick my son again, and